Teaching the Teacher
by Amillea Moravii
Summary: Random one-shot. Valkyrie is injured and takes a day off work to go to school. An exchange student takes over the art class and usurps the teacher. Enjoy and stuff.


**DISCLAIMER: I do not own Skulduggery Pleasant.**

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><p><strong>Teaching the Teacher<strong>

Valkyrie climbed in the window, tensing her shoulders against the sudden pain the blasted through them.

"Damn," she growled, clenching her teeth. She and Skulduggery had been tailing a suspect that was thought to be involved in the murder of two Sanctuary officials. The reflection, which had been sitting at her desk working on her algebra homework, glanced up as she entered.

It sat still, turning only its head to look at her as it briefly recounted its day.

You'd think that in her last year of high school, Valkyrie couldn't learn any more, but the amount of pointless shit that teachers managed to cram into kids brains never ceased to amaze her.

"…transfer student from Australia who is apparently in your art class."

Valkyrie snapped her head back to the reflection.

"Transfer student? From Australia? Here?"

The reflection shrugged. "She's here on student exchange. She finished all her schooling in Australia and topped the state she came from, apparently she's really smart. She came here to study in Ireland for an extra year."

Valkyrie was bemused. "Why the hell would someone _choose_ to go to school – in another country – when they didn't have to?"

The reflection shrugged again. "Ask her yourself. Skulduggery called when you were out. He said you should take tomorrow off, something about recuperating from an injured shoulder."

Valkyrie clenched her teeth. "Really? I've only torn a muscle or two and dislocated it."

"That's what he said."

Valkyrie growled at nothing and muttered something incomprehensible.

"Are you ready to resume your life now?" the reflection asked blandly.

"Yeah, yeah. Get in the mirror."

The reflection, with no feelings to hurt, stepped back through the polished chrome and turned to face her. Valkyrie touched the glass gently and remembered the day's work.

"Okay," she said, her reflection a normal reflection again.

She sorted and sifted through her memories and found a couple of the new girl.

She was pretty. Hair the blackest midnight, eyes a bright, eerie gold. Her skin was tanned and smooth, with a couple scars here and there.

"Well, I guess I'm going to meet this girl tomorrow."

She just felt sorry for this girl. The art teacher Valkyrie had was probably the most life-sucking person on the planet.

He could have given Caelan a run for his money.

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><p>Valkyrie walked into the art room and sighed. Nothing was new, nothing was fancy. Everything was old and boring. The supplies were packed away in the store room at the back of the class, and Mr. Metz had already filled most of the board with work to copy down.<p>

A new, accented voice spoke from just behind Valkyrie's shoulder.

"Wow. There's no life in here, is there?"

Valkyrie, years of training and instincts yelling at her, whipped around, bringing an arm up to defend herself from any attack.

The new girl stepped back quickly, bringing her own arms up in front of her defensively.

Valkyrie was shocked. Why would she do that?

The new girl stood stock-still for a second and lowered her arms. "Sorry," she said quietly. "I'm just used to flinching away from sudden movements like that. My friends have some of the fastest reflexes in the school, way back in Australia."

Valkyrie dropped her arms and smiled. "Hi," she said, holding out a hand. "My name's Stephanie."

It had taken her all morning to get that right.

The exchange student smiled and gave her a brief hug, leaving Valkyrie shocked. "My name's Mariah."

Valkyrie smiled and headed back to one of the benches at the back of the room, Mariah right next to her. Within minutes, they were chatting away merrily.

"Ladies," Mr. Metz called. "Be quiet. This is time for work."

Mariah sighed. "Time for torture, more like."

"What was that, Miss Whiteman?"

Mariah spoke up. "This isn't art. This is boring."

Valkyrie turned away and swore under her breath. This girl was taking on _Mr. Metz_? Gutsy chick.

"_Excuse_ me?"

She let out a laugh. "This isn't art. This is boring. Didn't you hear me? Art is supposed to be fun, full of life.v It's supposed to be happy. The easiest way to teach–"

"I think I will do my job, Miss Whiteman. It is not your place to speak out." Mr. Metz's voice had gone ice cold, but Mariah seemed unfazed.

"Well, can we at least play the radio or something?"

At this Mr. Metz turned purple. "How _dare_ you Do you think you can teach this class better than I can? I have taken a teaching course in history, English, physics–"

"Yeah. You did a teaching degree. But leadership was one of the things we had to display in Australia to graduate. WE had to take a class. And I topped this subject for three years back home. I know what I'm talking about here."

Mr. Metz couldn't seem to speak. "You… You…" he spluttered.

Mariah rose gracefully from her seat. "Please, sir, sit. I'll show you how to teach an art class."

Mr. Metz threw his arms up in the air and sat down behind his desk, watching the new girl. He doubted her.

Valkyrie doubted her.

Mariah, however, had no problems. She quickly opened the curriculum plan to the current week and scanned the schedule.

"You don't have any studio time planned here a all."

"Any what?" asked one of the students.

Mariah looked at him quizzically. "Studio time. It's what my old art teacher called the lessons when we'd do practical work and nothing else."

Valkyrie racked the reflection memories. "I don't think we've ever done more than a few minutes of practical work a week at all."

Mariah snorted in disgust.

"Right. This is going out the door." She slammed the book closed and threw it back to the teacher.

"So, from what I've read, you working on various artists, right?"

A collective nod from around the room.

Mariah nodded. "Okay. Have any of you heard of Sacha Jafri?"

Everyone shook their heads.

"Umm… okay… what about Philip Wolfhagen?"

More shakes.

Mariah shook her head. "Wow. This is going to be tougher than I imagined."

Without hesitation, she picked up what seemed to be her visual arts diary from previous years and opened it to a few pages. She turned to a blonde boy sitting in the front row. "Run somewhere – I don't mind where, and get" – she paused to get a quick head count – "fifteen copies. Hup to! Be quick! Run like the wind, Bullseye!" She clapped her hands and he ran out the door.

There was a ripple of laughter, and quick as a flash, Mariah had turned around and was rubbing stuff off the board.

"Okay, so, first off, we're going to look at an artist call Sacha Jafri. He's epic. His works are so pretty…" She used a funny voice, and there was more laughter.

"Right. Now, he's British. Not sure exactly where from, but somewhere around here. I think. But that's beside the point…"

And from then on, Mariah started having what seemed to be a casual conversation with the class, all the while telling them facts about some guy they'd never heard of.

The boy – Valkyrie had forgotten his name – entered the classroom about ten minutes later. "Right," Mariah said, taking the copies and the diary back from him. "Now, take one, pass it on, you should all know the drill by now. If not, you're even stranger than I am. And I don't _think_ that's _quite_ normal. So. Go. Quick, quick, quick!" within thirty seconds, everyone was muttering excitedly and looking at the examples of works on the page.

"Now, let's read, shall we? Someone start off for me – Steph, you start."

Valkyrie snapped out of her trance. "Who what?"

"Read! Quick! Go, go go!"

With the teenager standing at the front of the class and Valkyrie in the back seat, Mariah scolded her to speak up a few times. Eventually, after several long minutes, Valkyrie had finished the paragraph.

She yawned.

Mariah sighed. "Oh, come on, Steph! You can't be tired! We're just getting into it!"

There was a quick groan.

Mariah sighed. "Oh, alright. Everyone, read through the rest of the information while I get a quick experiment ready to finish up class with.

The strange part was, they still had another half an hour left.

"Miss?" asked a large, dark-haired girl.

Mariah laughed. "I'm your age. Call me Mariah."

"Umm, okay… Mariah, we've never done an experiment for a whole half an hour before."

She scoffed. "The time'll fly by! Come on, chop chop! Faster you're done, faster you paint!"

And with that, the entire class turned their heads back to their papers and read.

"Wow." Mr. Metz stood up and stared at Mariah. "You actually got them to do something. I was under the impression that they were all dumb."

Mariah, busy with finding inks, watercolours, and acrylic paints, didn't answer him for a second.

"You're just too far deep into the theoretical side of teaching. Art is one of those subjects that you have to enjoy to learn anything from it. Copying things from the board is all well and good in things like maths, English and physics, but in art, students have to be involved in order to feel like their learning anything."

He opened his mouth to protest, so she pushed on. "I've topped this subject three times. I only did it because of my teacher. She was one of the most fun people you'd ever meet. Without her, I'd have failed art."

Mr. Metz was speechless. Mariah, having done her job, turned her back on him and pulled out some A2 pieces of paper, clipping one on the board and handing them out to everyone.

Valkyrie was the first to finish scanning the information, and looked up, propping her chin up on he hand. Mariah had organised everything and found her.

"Ready to actually do something?"

Valkyrie nodded, smiling. Mariah clapped her hands and caught then immediate attention of the class.

"Right, we all had enough of reading?"

There were a few chuckles, and Mariah nodded. "I'm assuming yes. Now, can someone please summarize what we just read?"

No answer.

Mariah sighed and picked someone at random. "You. Can you give me a fact about Sacha Jafri?"

The girl shrugged and looked panicked for a moment. Mariah sighed – again – and read out a few facts.

"Now," she told them, "Armed with that information, do you think you could do a very quick replica of his stlye of work? I don't want you to copy one of his pieces. I want you to create your own piece while still using his techniques and styles."

Confusion.

Mariah laughed gently and turned to the piece she had on the board.

She picked up a brush, dipped it in ink, and drew straight onto the paper, creating a humanoid figure.

She shrugged. "Something like that? You have to work very quickly; you don't have time to stuff around. So, go for it!"

She turned back to the board with that and started inking in another figure behind the first one. The class scrambled to pick up their stuff and get started.

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><p>When they were done, Valkyrie heard one off her classmates whisper: "Best. Art class. Ever."<p>

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><p><strong>AN: Very random one-shot I thought up in the middle of something. Read and review, you know the big deal thing. I'm actually very sore and tired and sick at the moment, so I figured, why not write something random?**

**Enjoy and let me know you comments :P**


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